Sometimes a surprise is a good thing!
by EscapingMe
Summary: One shot, something I found on my computer - edited it a bit, but mainly left it. Trying to tempt myself into reinvesting in my 2 stories and more that I have. Story is loving and funny!


The air inside the ship was a smothering ninety-five degrees with seventy percent humidity but by Abby's way of thinking it beat the dry heat of the south west. She often wondered during odd, idle moments of thought if all it would take to make a poor man's jerky in Phoenix was to set the thin strips of meat on the side walk and let nature do its work. The intense UV rays of the sun could cook it easily enough. She should know because she burned like a lobster after fifteen minutes of walking from her apartment to work. The meat would cook and it would dehydrate simultaneously.

The preferred method of cooling indoors wasn't air conditioning, that simply made the air so dry your sinuses cracked and bled. In Phoenix, opening your windows for very long did the same thing. No, evaporative coolers were the way to go. Swamp coolers, as her Grandmother in Vegas used to say. Abby never bothered to use hers, much smaller than Grandma Irene's, but still just as bad. It would put humidity back in the air, sure, but it also put it all over everything else. Walking around barefoot was an experience that always got mixed results from out of towner's.

At first they'd usually make a noise of distress, hopping from foot to foot before the usual assumptions and questions came. The carpet is wet and cold, did a pipe burst? Was it recently washed but not dried? It wasn't just the carpeting either, but the clothes in the closet, the furniture. No, Abby didn't miss anything about dry heat and swamp coolers. She'd never been to the deep south or even Florida, but it was where her parents had relocated to once she'd been firmly ensconced in college. Based on their phone calls and letters, her current environment seemed an exact replica.

Funny that she'd gotten to experience it inside an alien spacecraft, a gadzillion miles away, instead of hopping an Earth bound Boeing 757 to visit her parents and stepping outside the terminal to meet their sedan at the curb. Abby always knew she was more backwards than forwards when it came to living her life but looking at the actual list she'd created not long ago on her tablet went a long way to proving it. Discovering a Floridian climate while floating in outter space was just the start.

A racheting, clanging sound drew her back to the present and her head around. Abby watched in amusement as G'thar struggled with barely restrained patience to operate the step ladder in his massive hands. He might've had an easier time of it if he hadn't kept flicking his amber gaze to the wide vent that stretched the length of the large common sitting room just below the vaulted ceiling as if he'd be violently attacked at any moment.

If she hadn't known what was going on she might've been curious but since she did, she bit her lip to keep from laughing. G'thar wouldn't appreciate that, no Yautja would, and he was trying his best to be considerate. He knew she liked quiet while studying or thinking and normally that was easily achieved. Apparently, obstinant step ladders had other ideas.

For a moment he paused after wrangling the metal contraption open and flicked a glance her way. Quickly, trying to seem unaware, she refocused her concentration on the tablet in her tacky hands. Abby didn't think he was fooled, but after several seconds of silence she heard him set the ladder determinately against the wall before its hinges groaned and trembled when he began to make his way up.

She delicately cleared her throat and scrolled a fingertip along the tablet's screen to view her list from the top. Since she still had Florida on the brain, it wasn't a wonder that her body decided to remind her just how uncomfortable wet heat could be. The long oversized sofa she currently sat on was upholstered with some animal's hide that she hadn't asked about yet but it reminded her a lot of leather. She knew standing up would actually feel like peeling herself off and the circulating drafts caused by the vents would bring a brief respite to her overly sweaty butt and thighs.

Tempted to do just that, she sat forward with her tablet in her lap instead and tried in vain to gather her hair back from her dripping face. It took some doing to unstick all the curly strands and compress its frizzed out spread into her fists. G'thar's back was to her now as he was finally eye level with the vent so she didn't bother to hide the winces as she bound it all up and off her neck with an elastic band from around her wrist. She really should take him up on his offer to hack it all off.

Abby wasn't vain, but she worried about walking onto the Clanship they'd be docking with in a few weeks looking like GI Jane. It wouldn't do for them to think she was sick. She was, but her particular problem didn't result in hair loss.

Resituating herself on the sofa with her legs tucked up to the side, she lifted her tablet and consulted her list again. It had started as a break from studying and a way to better analyze her situation. The amount of learning and adjusting she'd have to do was endlessly daunting but Abby enjoyed it. Academics was a passion of hers and probably the one thing she missed most about her school years. Thanks to forty thousand dollars of student debt that wouldn't be a worry anymore, she was a skilled linguist by trade. Abby allowed herself a wistful smile.

It wasn't easy to learn multiple languages well into your twenties let alone master them and their accents to ensure authenticity. Those were among her best achievements though. Linguistics was complicated, multifaceted and tricky not just for the brain but for the ear and tongue too. She didn't have many fond memories of social situations in middle school but her eight grade Spanish class had to be credited as the catalyst to find her true calling and now, her true home.

"Do you really think I can master the language?" she found herself asking.

"Sei-i," G'thar said without hesitation, like she'd asked him if the Earth was round instead.

"Easy for you to say, it's your native tongue, no pun intended. You have throat muscles that I don't, you have tusks to click and clack and you still haven't told me how you can purr and breathe at the same time."

"Practice," he gurgled out in English with a grunt while levering open a couple of the vents small access panels. "I speak your tongue without your tongue or throat or lips. Practice."

Abby glanced at him then, admiring the dense play and definition of muscles along his back and shoulders. She didn't dare let her eyes drop lower. They both had work to do but did he really have to run around the ship in nothing but his loincloth? If he was just as hot as she was, he should lower the temperature in here. Then they could both put on more clothes besides their underwear.

"Practice with me then," she suggested.

G'thar grunted again, unhooking a long blacklight looking hand held device from his utility belt and flicked it on. The bulb powered up with a low hum and flicker as purplish light bathed the side of his face. It made his tusks glow an unearthly white before he aimed it into the open vent panels and panned it around.

"G'thar, come on. If practice makes perfect, I can't just sit here and talk to myself. That's one sided learning. I need to be able to listen and understand your language to hear it too."

"And speak it," he paused in his search with the light and his speech too as if groping for the right words, "ensure authenticity?" Satisfied that he'd gotten it right, he tilted his dreaded head in her direction.

Abby nodded and propped her elbow on the sofa arm, then her chin in her hand. Huffing, G'thar turned back to the vents as the back and forth sweep of purple light resumed. It really was a chore to communicate with him sometimes but if he needed her to break ground on a new topic, she would. Clearing her throat a couple times, she reached for the glass of Naxa juice on the side table for a healthy swig. She'd discovered that phlegm, frogs in the throat and dry mouth were bad for trying to attempt this. Once her air way felt clear and her tongue could wetly slick around her teeth, she brought a hand to her throat and carefully, meticulously placed her fingertips to exert pressure where she'd need them.

She might not have complex throat muscles like a Yaut but through blind luck and experimentation she'd found out that she could almost mimic their throat's ability with the help of her hand. Kind of like playing chords on a guitar, all you needed to know was where to press, when, how much, and how to best coordinate it all. Abby took a deep breath, swept her blue eyes down the length of his body and grinned. She knew what she wanted to say.

"Your loincloth is too short." A simple enough sentence but she thought she'd done a decent job of matching the gutteral with enough intonation. G'thar's response was reactionary but Abby didn't know if it was because of what she said or the fact that for the three clacks involved in the word 'loincloth' she'd needed to employ her tongue ring against her teeth.

Slowly, he made a half turn towards her. She could already hear the deep thrum of his chest, like an engine smoothly idling. He was purring at her but it was low key rather than full throttle. Abby jerked her eyes from his butt and met his stare, then promptly lost the ability to breathe. His eyes were like flames, intense and lit from within with a hunger that she was more than familiar with. Well, at least she'd managed to get his attention. She calmly waited for a reply and arched an eyebrow.

The reply she received though wasn't so simple a sentence as hers. There were several of them all strung together without much pause in between and his pace might've been natural for a fellow Yaut but it was unfortunately two speeds too fast for Abby's comprehension. Not wanting to sit there like a dummy with a blank, glazed look on her face she knit her brows and pinched the tip of her thumb between her teeth. Some words she caught but was it enough to reply to him?

G'thar still held her in the crosshairs of his stare and seemed to understand that she hadn't caught most of his speech. Taking pity on her, he summarized his earlier words into a single sentence. "I can smell you."

Abby's heart tripped behind her ribs and she could feel the flush of color up the back of her neck, spreading over onto her cheeks. She didn't know if it was the words he'd used or how he'd said them but a new flood of sweat prickled all over her body in its explosive rush to leave her pores. She trembled involuntarily and wet her lips.

G'thar's continual purr ramped up like the push of an accelerator. Before long, its loud resonations dominated the room and vibrated her lungs until her vision swam. It was like seeing everything through a heat haze coming off asphalt. Or maybe she'd simply spontaneously combusted. He even seemed to preen and posture with subtle poses of his body to show off at the best advantage. Muscles tensed and jumped, rippled and contoured with shadow.

Abby's mouth watered and she squirmed on the sofa. The big brown, tan and beige lug never seemed to understand that his mating display wasn't needed. She was a sure thing. But every time he did it, it was oddly touching. It was automatic for him, she knew, since Yauts needed to attract the attention of different females rather than worry about how to keep just one but this same tactic was effective for both, Abby thought.

As his mating musk reached her nose, she inhaled deeply and fought the urge to close her eyes in bliss. The scents release caused a faint, oily sheen about his shoulders and upper chest. With a hand still in position at her throat, Abby let her gaze caress and grope his magnificent body from his clawed toes to the top of his crested head before speaking. "I can smell you, too." There was no mistaking the huskiness in her voice, even in his language.

G'thar continued to purr, watching her intently on the sofa. Just as he was about to abandon his mission with the vents, Abby's eyes flickered to movement behind him on the wall. She shrieked at full force, gripping her tablet tight as she sprang up from her seat and scrambled backwards to the far edge of the sofa, where her noise turned into hysterical laughter at watching her mate. He'd reacted instantly to her distress, spinning on the step ladder to encounter the out pouring of cock roaches that now ran up along the ceiling and down along the walls.

He roared in defiance and made to lunge to squash some bugs as they poured out, but his balance was upset and he teetered precaritously before falling off the side to crash on the ground with a loud thud, the metallic clanking of the falling ladder merely a back drop to G'thar's foible at moving too quickly.

"I told you not to take that crate!" Abby exclaimed, tucking up her legs and keeping a close watch on the invading bugs as her mate jumped to his feet and roared again, using his palms and fists on the walls to squash the invasion. "Never, ever take anything from an ally in New York City! I told you there'd be bugs!"

While her mates libido had definitely turned into aggression, Abby continued to laugh as she watched him punch and thump along the walls, desperate to keep up with the influx of insects. She'd told him to merely take the contents of the crate and put it into his net bag but he'd scoffed at her and taken the whole thing instead, despite her protests. Now he was reaping the consequences. Abby didn't know whether to be amused, embarrassed or dismayed but her laughter kept coming.

Experiencing Florida's climate on a spaceship in space? Check. Being actively pursured by a virile male? Check, though he was an alien in every sense of the word. Having sex and losing her virginity? Check, by said alien male. Having the best mind-bending orgasms of her life? Check, by said alien male. Being able to prove her own feminine prowess? Check, in a hunt planned and overseen by said alien male. Dealing with cock roaches in space? Check.

There really wasn't a better time.

"I'm pregnant, G'thar!" she called, in the middle of her gut busting laughter as she squirmed and scaled the sofa.


End file.
